Thursday, November 22, 2012

Tea-party with Misako Aoki *starry eyes*

I've been on a hiatus of sorts, my apologies! Part of the reason is because work has been very busy and just trying to stay afloat of things was sapping a lot of my energy and I simply wasn't in the mood. Excuses, excuses...

But I am back to report on a tea-party with Misako Aoki that I was lucky enough to attend on last Tuesday!

Jrunway, in conjunction with the opening of their flagship store at Plaza Singapura, invited Misako Aoki as the runway model for the Putumayo range that they are carrying. At the same time, they organised a meet Misako Aoki tea-party session as part of the opening events, so I hurriedly signed up when it was first announced that the session would be limited to the first 30 persons and got a place!

There was some logistics problems for me though as the tea-party was on a Tuesday evening, starting at 6.30pm, and I would be at work until 6pm. Technically, I would be able to rush down to the cafe when the clock immediately strikes 6pm and to whoosh out after telling my boss, bye! But the dress-code for the tea-party was a strict be in Gothic Lolita fashion garb so I would have to be in loli at work in order to save time and be punctual for the tea-party, and being in loli at work is something I prefer not to do.

I decided to take time off instead from work and that is another story by itself, lol. I ended up leaving the office at 4.00pm instead, which would still have given me enough time to change. But on the morning of the day, I had wardrobe malfunction with my shoes, my only pair of white shoes, to go with my intended outfit, and I had to rush down to the mall to get a new pair instead.

Suffice, I found new shoes (painful but worth it), changed and was at the tea-party promptly!

Outfit worn for the tea-party! Photo by Jasmine

As I was coming from work and had to bring things to change, plus it was a workday night, I had originally intended my outfit to be casual and was going to wear a plainer Innocent World jsk. But upon advisement, I decided to be more dressy and chose to wear Metamorphose's Wonder Silhouette OP instead. And.... I still ended up being rather dress-down casual, compared to some of the other attendees, heh. I do like my outfit in the end, but I wish I had chosen a more obvious hair accessory at least. I'm wearing a dark blue bow on me head but you can't see it in the photo!

At the tea-party, we started off with a Q&A session with Misako Aoki. She is so very pretty in person! And taller than I had expected! From her photos in the EGL bibles and Kera, I had imagined her to be smaller in stature for some reason. Some of the questions asked to Misako was how she would coordinate her lolita outfits and she gave a few pointers like she would ensure her skirt would go with her hair bow. I immediately looked down at my skirt and remembered my hairband and yes, they don't match, hahaha! Another question was how many lolita outfits does she have and she said, after thinking a while, about 100? Misako also mentioned she likes ensemble sets and her most nostalgic brand would be Baby, the Stars Shine Bright.

After the Q&A, Misako happened to sit at my table with some of my friends (Steph of Moar Lace Please, Jasmine of Frivolous Indulgences, Teresa of No Sauce Please and Ivory)! I think it was mainly because our table still had much slices of cake left and a chair to sit down! We chatted with her briefly about what places to go for good food in Singapore, lol. We recommended her to try a local dish, chicken rice, while here and we found out later through her twitter that she did!

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No photos was allowed at the tea-party session but after, we convened to Jrunway, the shop itself, for a group photo. I'm not sure if the organisers relented the rule of no photos but they then said we can have photo requests with Misako.

Our group photo with Misako Aoki! Photo credit to Cher-ly

There was a flurry of photo requests with ﻿her and she was very obliging to everyone. Ivory then egged me to take a photo with just her and myself....I confess I was feeling a bit nervous since pretty Japanese models with long, smooth hair tend to make me so, heh. But it happened!

The ubiquitous victory sign and derpy (mine) face

As the invited model for Jrunway's Putumayo range, Misako was naturally wearing only Putumayo pieces. For the tea-party, she was in Putumayo's Alice set. One thing about Putumayo dresses is I always think they're rather short, but Misako carried the entire outfit off very nicely and the dress didn't seemed too short on her. Ah, the power of the kawaii ambassador is strong!

Group photo of all attendees taken by Jrunway with suitable product placements. Misako has a better photo on her own blog actually

For more photos on the tea-party and the actual fashion show to see Misako on the runway, you can visit Jrunway's Facebook for photos.